Great Expectations summary

Young Pip is visiting his parents' graves when an escaped convict seizes him and demands food and a file. Pip steals a pork pie and a file from home, delivers them on the foggy marsh, and sees a second convict. Soldiers capture both men on Christmas Day; the first, Magwitch, tells them he stole the pie himself, protecting Pip.

Uncle Pumblechook takes Pip to Miss Havisham, who lives in a rotting mansion in a yellowed wedding dress. Estella laughs at his boots and hands. Ashamed of his home, Pip tells wild lies about the visit, and Joe tells him that lies are not the way out of being common.

After a few visits, Miss Havisham pays for Pip to be apprenticed to Joe. At the forge Pip is miserable, and the journeyman Orlick hates him. Mrs. Joe is attacked and left unable to speak; Biddy comes to care for her.

Mr. Jaggers arrives and says an unknown benefactor will make Pip a gentleman. Pip leaves for London, where he lives with Herbert Pocket, the pale young gentleman he once fought at Satis House. He befriends Jaggers's clerk Wemmick, visits Estella, and runs into debt.

Pip grows snobbish. He is ashamed of Joe's visit and cold to the village, and he watches Estella being courted by the rough Bentley Drummle.

On a stormy night, a rough old man climbs to Pip's rooms. It is Magwitch, who has made a fortune in Australia and tells Pip that he, not Miss Havisham, made him a gentleman. Pip is horrified, but he agrees to protect the man, who is in danger of hanging if caught in England.

Magwitch tells his story and names Compeyson, the swindler who ruined him and who once jilted Miss Havisham. Pip tells Estella he loves her, and she answers that she will marry Drummle.

Pip works out that Jaggers's housekeeper Molly is Estella's mother and Magwitch her father. Miss Havisham begs forgiveness and funds Herbert's partnership, then catches fire, and Pip burns his hands rescuing her.

Orlick lures Pip to the limekiln and nearly kills him before Herbert and Startop arrive. The friends row Magwitch down the Thames toward a steamer, but Compeyson leads a police boat to them. Magwitch pulls him into the water, and Compeyson drowns.

Magwitch is condemned to hang. Pip tells him before he dies that his lost daughter lives and is a lady. Pip then falls into a fever; Joe nurses him and pays his debts. Pip returns to the forge on the day Joe marries Biddy, and goes to work for Herbert's firm in Cairo, becoming a partner.

Eleven years later, Pip visits the forge, meets little Pip, and walks to the ruins of Satis House. There he finds Estella, softened by suffering. They are friends at last and walk out of the garden hand in hand.